Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Road to the World Cup begins somewhere, and the first of 832 matches which will be used to narrow FIFA's 207 member-nations down to the 31 which will join host, Brazil, in the 2014 World Cup finals was played last night. In the first leg of a CONCACAF first round match, Belize (ranked 172 in the world) took a 5-2 aggregate lead over Montserrat, a small island nation that was all but destroyed when the Soufriere Hills volcano became active in 1995.

The rest of CONCACAF first round qualifying, involving the ten lowest-ranked nations, will be played by the end of July, and early AFC qualifying is also slated to begin this week as well. In case you're interested, the U.S. enters qualifying in CONCACAF's third round which will be played beginning in June, 2012. Check out the entire CONCACAF qualifying procedure here.

The Road to the World Cup begins somewhere, and the first of 832 matches which will be used to narrow FIFA's 207 member-nations down to the 31 which will join host, Brazil, in the 2014 World Cup finals was played last night. In the first leg of a CONCACAF first round match, Belize (ranked 172 in the world) took a 5-2 aggregate lead over Montserrat, a small island nation that was all but destroyed when the Soufriere Hills volcano became active in 1995.

The rest of CONCACAF first round qualifying, involving the ten lowest-ranked nations, will be played by the end of July, and early AFC qualifying is also slated to begin this week as well. In case you're interested, the U.S. enters qualifying in CONCACAF's third round which will be played beginning in June, 2012. Check out the entire CONCACAF qualifying procedure here.